Russian Masterpieces

In the second half of the nineteenth century in Russia, there were two groups of composers, one based in Moscow and the other in St. Petersburg. The Moscow group included composers who were exceptionally well-trained and in tune to the progressive romantic style of western Europe: Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Arensky. The St. Petersburg group was made up of semi-professionals and ambitious amateurs whose original ideas often outreached their limited training: Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and Borodin. Together with Cui (his music is totally forgotten today, but the name is still remembered as the critic whose vitriolic review plunged Rachmaninoff into three years of depression), these five composers came to be known as the "Mighty Handful," better known in the West as the "Russian five."

Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumblebee

Nikokay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was the most accomplished and prolific composer among the Russian Five. Although he wrote fifteen operas, he is chiefly remembered today for his orchestral pieces, such as Sheherazade, Capriccio espagnol, Russian Easter Overture, and Flight of the Bumblebee.

However, the Flight of the Bumblebee comes from his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, His Son the Glorious and Mighty Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and the Beautiful Swan Princess. The music accompanies Prince Gvidon as he is magically transformed into a bumblebee so that he can fly back home to correct the wrong caused by his mother's two jealous sisters and an old evil hag. In revenge, he stings the three wicked women in the eye.

The Flight of the Bumblebee is usually played in the short version as a stunning vehicle to demonstrate virtuosity, and for that reason it is played more often in arrangements for solo instruments, not for orchestra. The long version for large orchestra as performed on this CD is by J. Strimer who ingenuously combined, without altering the original orchestration, the bumblebee's two flights and other brief flight motifs that occur in Act III of the opera.

Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) owes all of his fame to two composers, his friend Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel. With his full-time occupation as a drunkard and occasionally sidetracked by nervous crises or fits of dementia, Mussorgsky left most of his large-scale works unfinished and in a chaotic state. Consequently, very few of Mussorgsky's works were published during his lifetime. Upon his death, Rimsky-Korsakov single-handedly began his mission of editing, completing, and re-orchestrating Mussorgsky's messy compositions for publication. While Rimsky-Korsakov undoubtedly recognized Mussorgsky's raw talent, he was thoroughly disgusted with Mussorgsky's crude, ugly, and naive compositional skills--or the lack of any skills--and felt compelled to "correct" his deceased friend's foul musical language.

One such composition that Rimsky-Korsakov edited was a suite for piano called Pictures at an Exhibition. Bare and sparse in texture, the music grows thick with massive chords banged out as if crying for something much grander than a mere nine-foot piano. When long notes are required to sustain the dynamics, something the piano is not capable of, it becomes apparent that either the music is a sketch for something else or a Herculean pianist with a magic touch is required to breath life into it. No wonder no pianist took this piece seriously. Enter Maurice Ravel in 1922, the year Pictures became THE Pictures.

When Serge Koussevitzky, the Russian conductor, left the Soviet Union in 1920, he needed a spectacular composition to impress the public and commissioned Ravel to orchestrate the Pictures. Ever since Koussevitzky's premiered the work at the Paris Opera on October 19, 1922, Mussorgsky's Pictures has been not only the best known work by this composer but also one of the most popular pieces ever written.

However, Ravel was not the first person to orchestrate Pictures. Rimsky-Korsakov had helped one M. Tushmalov to orchestrate the suite. Alas, Tushmalov was either incompetent or unenthusiastic or both; some of the most strikingly original pieces were left out--Gnomus, Tuileries, Bydlo, and some Premenades. Ravel must have known this orchestration, for there are places where his instrumentations are identical to Tushmalov's. In spite of this, Ravel's orchestration is superior. In fact, the continuing success of Ravel's orchestration indicates that in competition with others' efforts (Funtek, Stokowski, Gortchakov, et al.), his remains "definitive."

Ravel's tone colors are truly original, and sometimes his version is criticized precisely for being too colorful. He is particularly creative in the pieces that Tushmalov failed to orchestrate. In Gnomus, he adds string glissando to the celesta part to create a very subtle yet eerie atmosphere. It is one of the very few instances in the entire suite where Ravel adds something of his own to the original text. But what an effect he creates! After being used to Ravel's "Technicolor" version, it is difficult to go back to the piano version. However, thanks to Ravel, many pianists have discovered Mussorgsky, and efforts have been made--usually unsuccessfully--to evoke the "colors" of the pictures on the piano.

Another criticism leveled at Ravel's orchestration is its "Frenchness." Certainly Ravel was French but Mussorgsky himself chose French subjects to portray: Tuileries, Limoges, Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. Even Mussorgsky's choice or the word "Promenade" is French. Here is Ravel orchestrating in his "French" style Russian music that is already "French." However, one picture in this recording has received a new tint of colors to correct its "Frenchness." in "Catacombs," I added active percussion parts to create a more idiomatical Russian sound, the idea having come from Tushmalov's orchestration which Ravel had toned down in his characteristically "French" manner.

There are two facts unknown to those who know Mussorgsky’s Pictures only through Ravel’s orchestration. At the end of Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuyle, the penultimate note is the pitch C. The piano edition which Ravel must have used (edited by Rimsky-Korsakov and initially printed by Bessel) has the right hand playing C and the left hand playing B-flat. Subsequent editions in the West corrected the “wrong note” (probably a typographical error) by making the left hand play C instead to avoid dissonance. Logic seemed to prevail. Mussorgsky, however, meant B-flat for both hands. In my recording, Ravel’s wrong note C is “re-corrected” to reflect Mussorgsky’s rather crude and original intention.

Another unknown fact is that Ravel too--like all his predecessors--is guilty of not orchestrating everything Mussorgsky wrote for his Pictures. Immediately following the two Jews mentioned above, Mussorgsky had another Promenade, similar to the very beginning of the Pictures. After I recorded the Pictures sans this Promenade, in order to keep the picture of the Pictures complete, I orchestrated it and nowadays include it always in my performances.

Balakirev - Islamey and Overture on Three Russian Themes

The leader of the Russian Five was Mily Balakirev(1837-1910). With his strong, fiery personality, he was able to influence, inspire, or even intimidate other composers to take the path that he saw as the right Russian way. In his view, the right Russian way was to combine the formality of Western European classical music with Russian folk elements tinged with Oriental exoticism.

His advice to other Russian composers often sounded like orders, not advice. The story behind Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture is a famous example. Balakirev not only gave specific instructions to Tchaikovsky to compose this piece, but even dictated what keys to use: five flats (D-flat major) and two sharps (B minor).

Balakirev had a strange, inexplicable attachment to these two keys and other keys related to them. In Islamey, subtitled Oriental Fantasy, Balakirev himself uses D-flat major and B minor. Originally written for the piano in 1869, it was revised in 1902. It is the second version that is known and played today.

Like Mussorgsky's Pictures, Islamey exists also as an orchestral piece. The Italian composer Alfredo Casella orchestrated it in 1907. Although Balakirev liked it enough to arrange its publication in Russia in 1908, another orchestral arrangement was made in 1912 by Sergei Lyapunov, a student and close friend of Balakirev.

The original piano piece is so difficult that Balakirev could never play it in tempo. Casella's orchestration, for a gigantic orchestra, is even more complex and so difficult that it is nearly impossible for an orchestra to play it at the prescribed tempo.

What Lyapunov did was to simplify Casella's orchestration to make it more practical and playable. Unfortunately, Lyapunov created problems as he was solving others. In my version as recorded here, I restored some important details Lyapunov left out, corrected wrong voice-leading at numerous places, and re-wrote the percussion parts more closely in style of the period in Russia.

Balakirev used Georgian melodies and rhythmic patterns in Islamey. The incessant rhythmic drive and plush exoticism of Islamey directly influenced Rimsky-Korsakov to write Sheherazade in 1888. When the famous choreographer Mikhail Fokine wanted to set ballet to Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade in 1912, the composer's widow would not allow it. Fokine turned to Lyapunov to orchestrate Islamey, and this version was premiered with the ballet in St. Petersburg on March 10, 1912.

While Balakirev enthusiastically meddled in other composers' works, he himself had an enormous problem with finishing his own works. Feeling uncertain, Balakirev revised many of his compositions. His Symphony No.1, for example, took him thirty-three years to complete.

The Overture on Three Russian Themes, one of his earliest compositions, was composed in 1858 and performed for the first time on January 2, the following year. However, this overture was revised in 1881 and finally published in 1882. As an afterthought, Balakirev added a cymbal and bass drum part as they are played in this recording.

The listener will be pleasantly surprised by two of the three Russian themes. The first theme, marked Andante, serves as the opening as well as the closing of the overture. The second theme, first presented by the clarinet solo, is much better known as the theme from the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, written some twenty years after the Overture. The third theme, played by the oboe solo, is a familiar tune from Petrouchka which Stravinsky wrote more than fifty years after Balakirev's Overture.

Rachmaninoff - Isle of the Dead

Like Balakirev, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was a musician of many talents--a composer, a pianist, as well as a conductor. But unlike the "Mighty Five" of St. Petersburg, Rachmaninoff was a well-trained professional musician from Moscow who left his name as one of the great, if not the greatest, pianists of all time, who composed some of the most popular works, and who was such a fine conductor that he was twice offered the post of Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The "Isle of the Dead" comes from the middle period of Rachmaninoff's compositional style when he was revered as the greatest musician in tsarist Russia. He had already composed two piano concertos, two symphonies, three operas, three symphonic poems, more than fifty songs, as well as many piano and chamber pieces. As a conductor, he was active in both the symphonic and operatic fields, conducting a wide range of repertoire. In 1905, when Rachmaninoff conducted a program of the "Mighty Five," including Balakirev's Overture on Three Russian Themes, a critic wrote that "this is a conductor by God's grace."

All this success was not so wonderful for Rachmaninoff, for he found little time to compose. The following year in 1906, Rachmaninoff left Russia with his family to settle in Dresden in order to concentrate on his compositions for the next three years.

In 1907, his new friend Nicholas von Struve introduced the composer to the Isle of the Dead, a painting by the Swiss painter Arnold Bocklin. This morbid painting, at the time, was very well-known; many composers were inspired to write music under the same title, including Max Reger's short symphonic poem from 1913. Today, the name Isle of the Dead is best known, of course, as the symphonic poem which Rachmaninoff composed in 1909.

While Reger merely tried to capture the mood of the painting, Rachmaninoff went much farther by conveying, in musical terms, a story in which the painting became the backdrop. It is often said that Rachmaninoff's subject is death; it is "proven" by the fact that he uses melodic motifs taken from the Dies irae. Nothing could be more wrong. Rachmaninoff's portrayal is much more profound and elaborate than a mere expression of death. His story is not about the Isle of the Dead, but about the Fated One--the unseen and unknown person in the coffin on the boat. He is, of course, physically dead. However, his spirit is not yet dead--at least not until he carried to the Isle of the Dead and buried there. Readers may find it fascinating to compare Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead to W. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Rachmaninoff never supplied a synopsis for his Isle of the Dead. As the conductor of this recording, the following is my interpretation of the symphonic poem.

Much of the music is about the Fated One's trip to the Isle of the Dead. (The part of the boat's return at the end is very short by comparison.) The music begins with the dark, murky water in early dawn as it shapes the rowing of the boat. The rowing motif is in the unusual meter of five quavers to the bar. Depending on the calmness (or roughness) of the water, the regular pulse of the rowing has one of the irregular rhythmic patterns: 2+3, 3+2, 1+4, or 4+1.

A sudden gush of wind sweeps by, lifting the fog. As the bright sky appears, seagulls are seen high above in the sky. Momentarily, it all seems peaceful and beautiful. But the water becomes more turbulent, as strong winds appear with dark clouds. The boat undulates high and low in the midst of huge waves. Charon rows faster and harder. No matter how hard the Fated One tries to stop the trip or to slow it down, his effort produces no effect at all. Suddenly, for the first time, the island is in full view! Its white rocky cliffs rising out of the sea look ominous. Its tall, dark cypress trees sway to and fro as if the Hands of Fate are beckoning the boat to come.

Terror grips the Fated One. The boat approaches the calm water of the docking area, but the Fated One is too weak to fight anymore. Besides, he knows now that there is nothing he can do to fight against Fate. As the boat is mooring, the Fated One's thoughts drift off, in denial of the harsh reality. Here, Rachmaninoff emphasizes the contrast by modulating to the bright key of E-flat major, the farthest key removed from the tonic A minor.

In this central section, the Fated One daydreams about the wonderful moments of his past life. The "unending melody"--the "love theme"--is a typical example of Rachmaninoff's vocal music in his operas. No matter how hard the Fated One tries to deny reality, his sweet, rambling thoughts become sourer and sourer as the burial proceeds. He screams, he struggles, he cries. But no one notices. His body is already dead--totally immobile and helpless. His spirit is violently crushed with the completion of the burial. In total despair, realization of eternal death creeps up on him as the music plays layer after layer of Dies irae in complex counterpoint. For one last time, the Fated One remembers the sweet days of life (again in E-flat major), and then pleads to be set free. No one hears him. The boat leaves and quickly disappears into the fog. The full melody of Dies irae is played for the first and the last time. The Fated One is forgotten forever.

June 14, 1994